Video: Van Jones and “revolution”

Ed MorrisseyPosted at 10:12 am on September 3, 2009

Naked Emperor News strikes again by finding revealing clips of an interview conducted by “Uprising Radio” with Van Jones seventeen months ago. Jones, the green jobs czar, explains how his allies want to conduct a revolution on the sly. Call it radical incrementalism, call it an offshoot of the Alinksy method, but it certainly seems that Jones is easily the most radical White House aide in many, many years:

Actually, stoking crises for political action falls more under the Cloward-Piven tactic, but why quibble? I wonder if some of the civil-rights pioneers might be surprised to hear Jones equating the green movement with the freedom of people and the end of political and economic discrimination based on color. I guess green is a color, but unless we’re talking about Martians or the Irish, it’s a ridiculous analogy.

A truly economic argument for “green jobs” would show how the transfer to a so-called green economy would outperform what we have at the moment. Since experience proves that argument a loser, Jones and his allies want to cast the effort as a new revolution. It sounds a lot like old revolutions, and one that won’t free people like the civil-rights movement, but one that will put people in thrall to an autocracy that dictates economic activity and strips property rights from its citizens. We saw that often enough in the 20th century to know how it turns out — badly.